Fox Two Professional Review (www.combatsim.com)

Fox Two Pro
by Thor "Slammer" Jorgenson

Launcher

One of the things all users of Thrustmaster controllers must have done sometime in their lives, is load up one of their sims, and then realise that they haven't got the correct file downloaded to the controllers. Previously, many of us used batch files to prevent this, but these are a little bit of a pain to setup and use.

Enter the Launcher. This little app presents itself as a small icon that sits in the system tray on the task bar. It's main function is to replicate the games menu in Foxy, ie. you just click on one of the Sims in the menu, and the Launcher downloads the correct file to your joystick, and then lauches your sim. So there's no longer any need to use batch files to download the correct joystick file for a sim before launching that sim.

The Launcher has been completely rewritten since Fox Two, and is more functional. Now, as well as being able to download your joystick files and run your favourite sims as in the Freeware version, it can also change your various Windows volume levels before starting your sim. This is brilliant, because many users prefer their mixer volumes to be much higher for their sim than for Windows use. It can also be used to quickly launch Fox Two Pro, Fox One, or an explorer window in the directory that has all your TM files in it.

Image viewer

The image viewer does exactly that - it displays graphical files. It's primary purpose is to capture the layouts from any of the graphical layout editors as bitmaps, and save them so that they can be edited with the users favourite image editing software. It's also there so that you can reload up these layout images, or others that may have been distributed with any files (ie. like Mystic's - all on the CD), to help you understand and learn about these files and what they do. The image viewer has been totally overhauled for Fox Two Pro for its seamless integration with the layout editors.

Key Tester

When you’ve downloaded a file to your controllers, one of things you’ll want to do is to check that the output from the hats and buttons is as you’d expect it to be. As most of the output is in the form of keyboard characters, then you could just open up Notepad and test your controllers there, looking at the text output when you press your hats and buttons. Obviously, this isn’t practical for function keys (F1, F2 etc) and many other keys, so the Key Tester is designed to be a more useful utility for this purpose.

It contains 3 text areas on it: the left hand text shows you the keyboard characters your controllers are sending. The 2 right hand text areas, the key down and key up areas, ie. showing you when the "keyboard key" is pressed and when it is released. This is particularly useful for identifying stuck keys, and in particular, held down statements created with the /H modifier.

Remember that with the /H modifier, you won’t see a series of characters being generated. What you will see is that the Key Up event isn’t seen until you release that particular hat/button. Also on the Key Tester, you can see the motion of your controllers and the state of the analogue buttons. A simplified version of the Key Tester is available in Fox One should you prefer its output.

Click to continue . . .

Fox One

Click for a larger image

Fox One is a new addition to Fox Two Pro, and is effectively a combination of a multiple file version of Fox Two Pro with Notepad. It doesn’t offer anywhere near the functionality of Fox Two, but this will suit a lot of hardcore programmers as well as a lot of beginners who either don’t want all the features in Fox Two, or find all the options overwhelming at first. Although developed by James, it was very much moulded by Mystic, Cowboy and Buzz Hoffman who were involved in its development from day one. It's no surprise therefore that these three previously very hardline DOS and Notepad users, now use it as their app of choice for developing their files. That says a lot! It offers several advantages over Fox Two Pro. These are:

It loads up faster, as it’s a smaller app.
It allows you to open up multiple files onto different tabs.
It uses fixed pitch fonts which means that alignment of slash modifiers is guaranteed.
It provides hardened Notepad users a more applied text editor that has all the advantages of Notepad for their file development, with more specific TM functionality.

It is extremely useful for comparing files and copying and pasting between multiple files. And for speed, there's no other app that touches it. I will be very suprised if there are any users now left using Notepad or Thrustmaster's C&CC to develop their files with!

Joystick analyser

The joystick analyser displays in a large window the behaviour of your joystick in a Windows environment, to test for spiking, calibration and other problems. It accesses the same Windows routines for monitoring the joystick motion as many games use, so it should replicate this more accurately and at higher resolution than other calibration routines. It is also extremely sensitive and accurate, as previous Fox Two users wil already know.

One of the problems that have plagued F22 Pro owners is the dreaded "spiking" issue. This manifests itself in a flight sim by your aircraft's jerky response around the central position of the controller, making landing and refuelling an utter nightmare. Many of you will know that it's a subject commonly asked about in the newsgroups. Thankfully, James has addressed it in detail in the help file, and the topic on spiking can be accessed directly from the Joystick analyser. It's worth noting here as well that common hardware problems form a substantial section of the new help file, which will be appreciated by many new users.

Goto part IV

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